A Great Big South Indian Adventure 13

The alarm went off at 4:15 am, but on the time scale for where we would finish the day it was quarter to midnight. I'd persuaded the Boys that 30 minutes from wake up to assembly was 15 minutes too many and we could leave at 4:30 instead of 4:15, hopefully gaining 30 minutes of kip.
We must have been ready to leave for home if the day before we'd spent 10 minutes discussing the next days alarm call. Anyway a shower, cup of tea were easy, plus there was a last minute change of trousers. The night before I'd laid out tight bikers jeans but putting them on remembered DVT. Then again I have heard so little of Deep Vein Thrombosis in the last decade, maybe it faded away or everyone takes precautions so it is another life threatener from history. Anyway changing trousers made the cases hard to reclose so a repack was needed.

I still had to wait 15 minutes for the others. They were presumably working on Indian or Italian time. Anyway standing in the lobby the usual feeling mixture welled from the depths, a combination of 'told you so' and 'where on earth are they, do I have the right time/day/place?'. 

There was another demand for us to pay wifi, this time from the night porter. We downright refused. I have no idea if it was a scam, or incompetent management. An argument at 4:30 does not start the day well and certainly does not leave you with an overwhelming sense of benevolence to the hotel.

Our drivers were early and efficient and had some fun on the semi-deserted streets going in to Cochin International Airport. Chris and I came up with the usual hand signals to greet Michael and Will as they passed our taxi and we passed theirs. 
It was interesting talking to Chris and getting his views on the trip. We managed to have a mini-moan about a few things but were still on a high. Looking back on it all now, it feels as though I was drugged by this time, everything was happening as if in a dream. Maybe that's what time does to memories, it dulls them into a dream. 

But we chatted and got to know each other a lot better in that ride than we had in the previous two weeks. Of course I felt the return of mild guilt as I understood more about where everyone else was coming from, rather than just thinking about me and my position. But so much of the trip was about that, getting away from MeMe.

The time seemed to pass quickly and we had enough to talk about so, did not end up in the particularly English conversational cul-de-sac of searching hard for innocuous topics to fill the silence. Our 2 hour taxi ride left us 3 hours early at the airport and we arrived as dawn was breaking.

Bags unloaded, taxis tipped. So far, so good.

Then we struck the part about not being let in.

To get into the main airport building you needed a ticket. On the way to India Emirates was so impressive, you could download your boarding pass onto your iPhone, which I loved and still had under a rarely visited part of the phone called Passbook. 
Checking in for these flights a few days before, in India, had not given us this option, so I was expecting to get the pass at the check-in desk. The check-in desk was the far side of a bloody minded soldier/bureaucrat.

Michael and Will were well prepared with lots of paperwork. Chris and I were not. The soldier at the front door pretended to consult passenger print outs, but actually put a bunch under his desk. He would not let us in. 
Presumably he was one of those who wanted to show the full power of his job by being bloody minded. Such a shame after the superb service we had experienced during the trip.

So Chris and I built up a fair line behind us as we try to talk our way through. I manage to curb my indignant temper as that would definitely not help here. We eventually went to Plan B and found out what the back-up procedure was, then walked off to the external ticket office.

Chris stopped at the manager's office, sensibly leaving my irascible self guarding the bags outside. He professionally steered through the procedural maze and got a manager to accompany us back to the obstruction at the door.

A massive new shiny airport of international standard, with a crusty old creaking bureaucracy to stifle the fun out of life. 

The helpful manager managed to find the list the guard had thrown away and there we were, clearly marked.

Battle hardened we walked into the large terminal. There were some 20 metres to the check in desks but Michael and Will were easy to spot, they were just about the only people in the departures area. 
The airport's business model was non traditional. The large space between the outside doors and the check-in desks would normally be filled with friends and finally saying goodbye. But the ad-hoc ticket check at the door meant only passengers were in the building, so the whole area was a waste of space. There were a couple of unvisited shops and a room with items of what appeared to be lost or stolen luggage sitting in small piles and as we walked in a coffee stall where Bullet Boys could regroup!
We had a coffee and Chris and I accepted the inevitable comments on our organisational ability, while I quietly fumed at the incompetence of it all.
We made it safely across no-mans-land to check in, which was a really simple procedure. We are seasoned travellers and Emirates is a seasoned airline. Plus we were so early there were no queues. Michael and Chris failed to get Will or I into business class, but they tried.
We then trekked as a group to a series of checkpoints with our carry-on luggage, which for me was my hydration pack, but the others had handbags and helmets. 

At the third passport check the next soldier/clerk in line was officiously waiting behind a console, in front of which sat some hand luggage. Being security conscious I told him there was an unclaimed bag to which the clerk said "somebody must have left it". Between the fourth and fifth stamps on our boarding passes, where the bags and passengers were screened for the first time, another mournful suitcase sat unattended as people filed by.
The bureaucracy to security ratio was the worst I have seen this side of the 1980's, when I used to get on planes with a sheath knife and you could sit with the pilot during the flight. But this was more managerial incompetence. A triumph of process over purpose.
I was actually a little nervous until we had cleared the area.

We found the Mildly Important Person lounge and surged in on Michael's out of date priority pass. Luckily no one wanted to stop us.

There was good coffee and omelettes and after we had scavenged food we repaired to the lounge room where we continued with our repertoire of obscene references and bad jokes.

The lounge was a wonderful holdover of the days of snobbery. People trying to look important while rustling through newspapers (remember them?) and getting ready to harrumph at the unseemly behaviour of four middle aged men who were not wearing ties or jackets. Although we did not mean to cause offense, we were just oblivious to our fellow travellers so yobbery met snobbery, without even noticing!

On the Dubai leg, poor Will ended up in a seat next to me. We spent most of the flight chatting and being boys. Luckily the air hostesses did not hear our compliments about them, especially their similarity to energetic actresses in short films that friends of ours had allegedly seen on the internet.
The banter was pretty incessant and at one stage Will was threatening to write a blog about sitting next to me. Luckily he fell into a brief nap before pen hit paper, or hand hit keyboard.

We disembarked pretty smartly in Dubai and had to wait while the 'front of the plane' duo finally struggled into the main area. 
Some group retail browsing degenerated into us trailing Michael who managed to lead off. Fairly soon Chris and Will got bored of waiting around and went for an international coffee. Michael finished gazing at more completely essential stuff we regrouped, again, at a coffee shop, again.
This time the large space around the back of the retail area provided enough room for Chris to provide the entertainment - a full scale reenactment of his dirt track incident, swerving around hassled airporteers on his imaginary Bullet.
The tale was no less excusable in full and graphic detail, so he stayed with the 'Dirt Track' moniker.

Will left the group first to catch his plane, carefully leaving his helmet at the table. We found it as we all got up a few minutes later and a few minutes too late to give it to Will. So Chris, as usual, stepped up to the plate and took it back to Blighty as his third item of hand baggage.
Michael and I split up on entering our Romeward plane and I managed a quiet 3 seats to myself again, even though the flight was pretty full. But the soldier training kicked in and I got a couple of hours kip scrunched up across the seats with slippery airline pillows sliding stealthily to the floor and the aisle and the seats behind.
We were tired when we met up after landing. Michael had sensibly arranged for valet parking and we called for the car as we saw our bags come off the reclaim belt. So we only had a few minutes wait in the cool Rome night air before cramming dirty bedraggled luggage into a clean Beetle. Michael drove, though he was obviously tired. The best way to spur him on was to occasionally offer to drive myself. His knuckles seemed to whiten on the wheel and another surge of adrenaline kept him going for the 3 hour trip across the mountains.
At least I stayed awake and we talked most of the way. Almost none of it was about future plans or obligations. There was no need to let reality intrude on our happy mood. 
It was 23 hours of travelling and sometime round about half-past-late when we got to my place. My daughter Steedley got up to greet Daddy. That was really good, but she had school the next day to I did not want to keep her up for too long. Michael accepted a glass of water and set off to complete his last 5 miles without major incident.

So the travelling side was done, but the memories were fresh, the blog had to be written and life had to be settled back into. 
It took a few days to worry about the little things. It has taken a few weeks to finish writing about the trip. Meanwhile the thoughts and memories have been left to season.
But those are for the epilogue. 

A Great Big South Indian Adventure 12

Our thunderous final rev up subsided and we posed for some final photos in an easy flowing trance like state.
I was definitely in a dreamworld, beaming away and endomorphined up to the eyeballs.
The photos were so worthwhile, to seal the occasion, to show what an achievement it was, to leave us with something more concrete to trigger our memories. We all look so overwhelmingly happy.
Luckily this was all planned and executed by Alex and Fritha. They understand these things and without creating a fixed point our memories would wander like wisps of smoke driven by our own narrow view, failing to capture the totality of the occasion.
But beyond the armchair philosophy it is good looking back and the photos capture the elation really well. And to misquote Robbie Burns just look at the broad bricht sunlicht Knights.

One reason it was easy to enjoy the whole Adventure was that Alex had a well organised support team. They were always there when needed, up before us mending bikes, transporting the luggage and being our safety net. They must have sorted out multitudes of problems that we never knew existed. Support like that gives you the chance to go on to bigger and better things.

In India there were always legions of people there to help and that makes it so much easier to appreciate the country. You do not see everything they do so it is important to remember their contribution to that enjoyment.

We had a whip round and the support team certainly deserved our generosity, not least from me after all the work they put in with the mess I caused!

After the photos Alex had presentations for them. Lovely got a huge cheer, for being Lovely, as did Dharmender, for ensuring we could ride every day. It is good to see them beaming away.

After the photos I wandered dazed into the hotel's highly polished hardwood open lobby which looked onto Lake Vembanadu about 100 metres away. The well kept lawns of the hotel grounds were sliced by small drainage channels, barely wide enough for a punt. One of these channels reached into the reception area, as modern architects would have it, integrating inside and out.

We were greeted by beaming smiles and very welcome welcome drinks served in fresh coconuts. They were delicious. Halfway through my second one there was a commotion.
The channel reaching into the reception area ended in a mini dock connected to the highly polished wooden floors by some highly polished wooden steps. Someone had irresponsibly left a canoe tied serenely at the dock.
It was inevitable, a bunch of bikers still on adrenaline, a welcome drink and a canoe.
Chris and Tony bravely set off with Alex lobbing his (empty) coconut at them to raucous cheers.
The entertainment continued as they tried to turn the canoe in the very narrow channel. then Tony lobbed his valuables onto the lawn and we knew.
They did, they tipped the boat. With a lot of cheering and jeering and loud feedback they arrived back in reception where the staff quickly arrived with towels to minimise the damage to their modesty, as they stripped off, and to the polished reception floors they were going to drip muddy water all over.

The check-in procedure was almost immediate after that, but the stroll to the rooms seemed long, even though the hotel staff were bringing our bags. We were tired.
The rooms looked luxurious, certainly well above my standard, but Steve and I had a double bed which wasn't going to work. He trudged back to reception to see what they could do. The only twin room was in the bowels of the hotel next to a drainage channel. It was damp and the corridor carried the heavy scents of tropical degradation and damp towels, but we took it.
After a welcome shower and change of clothes I went to get a wi-fi code. At reception there was a long and hard argument about paying for internet. We do not pay separately for water or electricity. Today internet is the same. I had to get snotty and said that I had over 16,000 readers of my TripAdvisor reviews and I was not happy. I got the code but it was not a happy victory, I hope hotels stop this racket.
The internet would work in reception, but not in our room. It was all tedious, especially as I had started publishing the blog and people were asking for more and I didn't want to be sitting alone in reception with a beer. It doesn't look good, Boozy Blogger No Mates.
I gave up and went for a swim where Fritha and Sarah were on top of the beer ordering system which was very welcome. Fritha was wearing a frangipani flower she had found under a tree. A tree I had passed earlier at had not noticed the flowers. Typical. The frangipani looked very tropical and suitable and lovely.
There was not much time to wallow in the pool before we had to get back and get ready for the last night dinner, but on the way back I liberated all the fallen frangipani and left them at the doors of various rooms.

This was the celebration supper, the occasion for us all to wear traditional Indian dress. The outfit I had bought on the second night in Mysore was entirely made of oil derivatives and seemed designed to cause profuse weight loss in the heat, so that was discarded in favour of the semi-casual cotton goodies I'd picked up in Coimbatore. Good choice.
As usual my efforts at glamour involved a shower and possibly a hair wash, I may even have found a comb, but that is by no means certain.
We assembled for the dinner and it was really good to see how other people had made an effort. The ladies looked radiant and the guys looked assertively nervous. 

The flowers were for the Bullet Boys as well, which suited Michael rather better than it should have. He looked like he was wearing mascara, which suited his pale blue shawar kameez.

It seemed a lot more civilised than usual and we even opted for wine rather than beer which calmed the nerves rapidly. At least there were photos as evidence and the smiles remained radiant.

With more drinks and, presentations it steadily hit home, I have a Nomadic Knight t-shirt, a Nomadic Knight certificate, an Adventure Ashram certificate. We really accomplished something. 

Before dinner and the descent into darkness Chris showed his touring experience and quietly took the t-shirts and certificates into his care until the next morning. Whatever happened later we wanted to take our trophies home.

We sat outside behind mosquito netting but outside the air-con. Some ceiling fans would have been good and at least I was wearing cotton and not the maroon stripey rayon robes (perspiration for the purpose of).
As expected after another good Indian buffet we wandered out to the lake's edge and indulged in music of our era, trying to remember all the words to 'Come On Eileen' and other classics of the time. Reality caught up with willingness and people drifted off to bed fairly early. The stalwarts went for Karaoke in Room 201.
I couldn't find the energy to move from the table and ended up with poor Marguerite suffering my usual debating position when drunkenly talking with Brits, defending immigration and Europe. It always gets a good discussion going!

I do remember waking up to find Steve had come back and got to sleep, so much for the razor sharp edge to the man of action, alert to the slightest noise.... 

Since there was no wifi in the room around dawn and hours before anyone else would be up, I went to write in reception. The scene of the previous days rumbunctious bikers held a stillness that foretold early morning mosquitoes. Given my mildly thick head and unwillingness to move a lot, the bloodsuckers were thankfully mostly hibernating, or teetotal.

Writing was writ and people arrived and breakfast was a pleasant buffet with a really good marsala omelette. Having an upbringing where devilled kidneys were praised in theory but not practice I was completely unused to a spicy breakfast. But there in India it just seemed right. In the same way that to Anglo-Saxons it would be blasphemy, to Italians leaving wine in the bottle at a restaurant seems right.

The breakfast time of day saw everyone online, loading photos and updating friends, family and other Facebookers. Tony had messed up pre-trip and booked himself a return flight from Bangalore, so he had to leave early. Chris seemed sorry to see him go, which was actually comforting.

Alex had organised a large sumptuous boat to drift us around the lake and sneak into those backwaters that caused so much merriment in Thekaddy. This being Kerala, where booze was banned or at least discouraged, Alex had sensibly organised a large cooler filled with cool drinks, some of which were not beer.

We languidly lazed around in this large boat, keeping to the lake's edge. At least we were moving, and near the water, so it was fairly cool. In the summer back in the day, before air-con and internet, it must have been a life saver. 
As expected along a lake's edge there were many summer houses of wealthy people. The houses were widely spaced with big gardens. But the jungle green was interspersed by splashes of colour and action as washer women beat clothes at the water's edge. These were probably not the owners.

There were a few other boats on the water, with well-to-do people, like us enjoying the superiority of being well-to-do. We waved to some and some waved back, but it didn't feel a very wavy or friendly occasion. Perhaps superior people don't wave.

We drifted into a tiny dock to let Alex and Vidyha bargain for lake langoustines. These are somewhere between a prawn and a lobster. These guys were fresh, we only hoped their food had been fresh as well. Fluffy got involved and given her daring bathing suit this earned her the moniker of Prawn Star.

The crustaceans were handed to the boat's chef, who was probably also the pilot, which is how Chris got to drive. His merchant navy days may not have been severely tested but it gave him something to do while the rest of us were chatting and searching for interesting things to talk about with fellow Adventurers we would not see tomorrow.  

The lake was still and the boat seemed silent, apart from our babble. Fish eating birds perched on poles staring druggedly at the water, a snake shuffled to shore, lillies failed to snag the propeller and we chugged along.

The really cold beers helped with chilling to the 80's music.  It was a time to relax and that was well deserved for Alex and Vidyha. 

By the time lunch was served I was sailing, in several senses, and getting up from the bow of the boat brought on a mild dizziness that meant being careful not to trip or bump into anyone or spill stuff. So I must have been tiddly. Anyway the food was absolutely delicious. Languidly lunching on langoustines. It has a ring to it.

In that restful post lunch lull the trip seemed to be long, but the conversation picked up and suddenly we are back at the dock.

So a shower and a change and then off to reception to write. But I fell asleep instead. A quick siesta, honest, but it didn't help with the blogging. A wonderful cup of tea provided the spark to publish blogs 4 and 5, then the last evening supper. It all felt mellow, with some ragging and bragging and hearty goodbyes, ready for the wake up call at 4 am.